When I receive payment I choose 'Receive Payments' which opens the 'Customer Payment' window. I fill in the customer, amount, date and method and then click on the 'Discounts & Credits' button and enter the discount here, then click 'Done'. Then I complete the Customer Payment window by clicking 'Save & Close'.
This saves the amount received and the discount, and I can see both in the Customer Balance Detail screen, and the correct amount shows as owing on the Customer Centre balance. But in the Customer Payment window itself and when I create a Statement, the balance is different, seemingly without the discounts applied.
-- Edited by Rachel Joyce on Tuesday 1st of July 2014 01:54:17 PM
Having gone through the entire register for this customer I have noticed that there were 4x £7 discounts added erroneously on different dates between April 2013 and August 2013 (before I worked here). These discounts should not have been made. They add up to the £28 discrepancy!
Can I write a journal entry to sort this out? If so please could you help me with this?
So the customer's balance is less than it should be or more? You will need to do a journal between the discounts allowed account (which the discount would have been posted to) and the customer's account in Accounts Receivable. Depending on which way round it is you will need to credit discounts allowed and debit accounts receivable (making sure you put the customer's name in the end box), or debit discounts allowed and credit accounts receivable.
In the end the customer balance was less than it should be by £28 (4x £7 discount), so I need to do a journal debiting the A/R and crediting the Discounts Allowed account.
However, to complicate matters, there was a missing discount in 2011 of the same value (£7) which should have been applied but was not.
Can I contra them in the journal, like this:
DR
CR
Accounts Receivable (customer)
21.00
Discounts Allowed
21.00
Memo: Correction of discounts
Or would I have to write two separate journal entries, one with £28 debit A/R, credit Discounts Allowed and one with £7 debit Discounts Allowed, credit A/R?
I added a contra journal entry, £21 debit A/R and £21 credit Discount Allowed.
This has increased the customer balance by £21 BUT it has also increased the "other" balance (in Open Invoices and in the Customer Payment window, as described before) by £21. So there is still a difference of £28.
I am at a loss! Do you have any suggestions?
-- Edited by Rachel Joyce on Wednesday 2nd of July 2014 12:03:10 PM
Sorry for the delay in replying.......been extra busy!
Just a quick idea, have you tried checking your data? Utilities - Verify Data. I have had some strange anomalies in QB before and on checking the data it detected some problems which rebuilding the data fixed.
No worries! I really appreciate your help :) I'm only on here during the day (at work).
I verified the data and no problems were found.
I checked the journal entry:
A/R balance increased by £21
Discounts Allowed balance decreased by £21
Customer Balance increased by £21
The problem remains in the customer's Open Invoices and Customer Payments (Receive Payments) window. They both reflect the £21 increase in customer balance, and therefore they are both still showing as £28 higher.
In open invoices, an earlier invoice is showing as £28 left to pay.
Do you think the problem might be to do with the 4 discounts (which were mistakes) not having been applied to an invoice?
-- Edited by Rachel Joyce on Thursday 3rd of July 2014 12:38:38 PM
It obviously sounds like it has something to do with the 4 discounts, bit of a coincidence if not. So those four discounts shouldn't have been applied to the invoices, and the customer has taken the discounts so still owes £28. Sorry, getting a bit confused now...lol Difficult to tell without seeing really. Any chance you could post some screenshots?
I think the erroneous payments MAY be there because a payment was received, the discount applied, then for whatever reason the payment was deleted but the discount was not (as I do know you have to delete the discount separately from within the register). Then the payment was put on again with a new discount applied.
It's the only thing I can think of.
I still don't understand how this would cause the problem I am having.
(Finally, just in case you notice, I matched a payment received 30.08.12 with a discount put on 18.11.12).
Thanks for the screenshots and I can see that there is definitely a difference of £28 between the outstanding balance on the customer account and the open invoices, which would suggest that four too many discounts have been applied.
It sounds like your suggestion was correct in that payments have been made with the discount applied and then the payments were deleted and re-entered but the discounts have been left behind if that makes sense.
What is your year end? It might be worth having a word with your accountant as to how to fix this as I'm at a loss now....lol